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Copyright, 191 1, by 
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Imprimatur. 



JOHN M. FARLEY, 

Archbishop of New York. 



PREFACE, 



In connection with the movement inaugurated by the 
New York State Historical Society to erect a memorial in 
honor of the discoverer of Lake George, Father Isaac Jogues, 
it has been deemed advisable to reprint the brief notice of 
his life which has already appeared as one of the monographs 
of the " Pioneer Priests of North America." It is here pre- 
sented with some emendations and additions. Very probably, 
also, it will be of service to the pilgrims who, during the 
summer, journey to the scene of his death at Auriesville on 
the Mohawk. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Lake of the Blessed Sacrament ----- Frontispiece '"" 
Orleans ----------- Facing page 7 / 



Isaac Jogues, S. J. ------- 

The Hill of Prayer ------- 

Auriesville, N. Y. — Bridge in the Ravine 

New York as Seen by Jogues - - - - 

Peter Stuyvesant -------- 

Statue of Jogues, at Dunwoodie - - - 

Auriesville, N. Y. — Ravine Procession 
of the Blessed Sacrament - - - 



21 ^^' 

27 
29 -^ 

32 
40 - 

46 -- 

53 ''' 



CHAPTER I 
On Lake Huron 

The first missionary who entered New York arrivcl 
drenched in his own blood. He had traversed Lake Cham- 
plain and Lake George, and was going to be burned to death 
at Ossernenon, on the Mohawk, the place now known as 
Auriesville, forty miles west of Albany. He was Isaac 
Jogues, then about thirty-six years of age. 

With Protestant historians Jogues is an especial favor- 
ite ; Parkman, among others, being very emphatic in his 
praise. Catholics, of course, admire him, and it is said that 
Gilmary Shea's manuscript of the Life of Jogues was stained 
with the author's tears. Jogues' gentle, almost shrinking, 
but nevertheless heroic nature is in striking contrast with 
the bold, aggressive and martial character of his friend and 
associate, de Brebeuf. Perhaps that is why he appeals so 
strongly to ordinary people. 

He was born at Orleans, France, January lo, 1607. '^^^^ 
cathedral of the city is dedicated to the Holy Cross, which 
may explain Jogues' repeated description of himself as a 
" citizen of the Holy Cross." He was baptized in the 
church of St. Hilary, and received the curious name of 
Isaac, for it was then the fashion among the French Cath- 
olics to imitate their Protestant neighbors in adopting 
names from the Old Testament. Thus Isaac, Samuel, 
Joshua, David, and even Shadrach, appear frequently on 
the registers of those days. There is such a Calvinistic ring 
in it all that one Canadian historian will have it that Cham- 
plain was not originally a Catholic because his name was 
Samuel. But the inference is not correct. 

The family of Jogues still resides at Orleans. They were 
known as Jogues de Guedreville well on into the eighteenth 
century, but that designation is no longer used, and thev are 



ISAAC JOGUES 

called de Dreiizy, It will be of interest to Americans to 
know that in the course of time one of the family became an 
intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin, who was then in 
France as Ambassador of the Colonies. It was probably at 
Franklin's suggestion that he attempted an establishment 
on the banks of the Ohio. The scheme failed, however, and 
he returned home. Had he directed his energies to the 
banks of the Mohawk, which his distinguished relative has 
made so famous, perhaps his efforts would have been 
blessed with success. The present Vicomtesse de Dreuzy 
is a German-American, born in New York. Her father also 
was a native of the city, but her mother was from Bogota. 
The maiden name of the Vicomtesse is de Liittgen. 

Another coincidence is that their house faces the church 
of Notre Dame de Recouvrance. This was the title given 
by Champlain to the church erected in Quebec after " recov- 
ering " Canada. Under the sanctuary of Notre Dame de 
Recouvrance, in Orleans, repose the remains of the family 
of Jogues de Guedreville, some of whom were eminent in 
their native city. 

The courtesy of the distinguished Curator of the Musee 
Historique d'Orleans puts at our disposal the family crest, 
whose peculiar quarterings it will be hard for our democ- 
racy to interpret. It consists of two stags' heads rcgardajits 
avcc cols arrachcs, with a silver lake below, on which a water 
fowl is floating, while in the center rises a rock, from which 
gushes a fountain. The Jogues de Guedreville were of 
noble blood. 

Jogues' first schooling was at Rouen, but at seventeen 
he entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Paris. Shea says it was 
at Rouen, and Rouvier, in his Apotrc Esclavc, agrees with 
him, while Rochemonteix pronounces for Paris. Perhaps 
he was in both. They all concur, however, in giving him 
the famous Louis Lalemant, the author of the well known 
Doctrine SpiritiicUc, as novice master. This Lalemant was 
not, however, as is commonly supposed, the brother of the 

8 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

two great Canadian missionaries, Charles and Jerome, and 
consequently he was not the uncle of Gabriel, who died at 
the stake, side by side with de Brebeuf. 

Of course, Father Louis Lalemant was intensely in- 
terested in the American missions, and doubtless that was 
the reason why, when the young novice was asked what he 
was seeking by entering the Society, and replied, " Ethiopia 
and martyrdom," Lalemant said, " Not so, my child. You 
will die in Canada." It turned out to be true, but there is 
no need of regarding the utterance as a prophecy. 

When his studies and teaching were over, he embarked 
for Quebec, and after two stormy months on the ocean he 
set foot on the shores of the New World, October 2, 1636. 
He was then twenty-nine years of age. On the vessel with 
him was Champlain's successor, the great Montmagny, 
whom the Indians called Onontio — a translation of the 
name Montmagny, or High Mountain. This title was given 
to all subsequent rulers of Canada. 

Fortunately we have the first letter that Jogues sent 
home. It was to his "Honored Mother," as he called her, 
in the dignified fashion of those days, and was written im- 
mediately after his first Mass in America. He had been 
looking at the vast river, the like of which he had never 
seen before. He had already met the painted red men, at 
whose hands he might expect death at any moment. Never- 
theless he wrote: " Honored Mother: I do not know what 
it is to enter heaven, but this I know — that it is difficult to 
experience in this world a joy more excessive and more 
overflowing than I felt on setting foot in the New World, 
and celebrating my first Mass on the day of the Visitation. 
I felt as if it were Christmas Day for me, and that I was 
to be born again to a new life and a life in God." 

A glimpse of the future was afiforded him two or three 
weeks later, when he was standing on the bank of the St. 
Lawrence, near the stockade which in course of time has 
grown into the city of Three Rivers. Down the stream was 

9 



ISAAC JOGUES 

coming- a flotilla of canoes, in the first of which stood Father 
Daniel, barefooted and bareheaded, his cassock in rags, and 
his breviary suspended by a string around his neck, and, 
though haggard and extenuated by hunger and fatigue, 
plying his paddle as vigorously as any redskin. Thirteen 
years after that Daniel fell, pierced with arrows, and his 
body was flung into the blazing ruins of his little chapel. 
But the light-hearted hero cared little what fate was in store 
for him, as he sprang ashore, on that October morning, to 
embrace the new soldier who was going to the battlefield 
to fight for God. 

Daniel was to remain in Quebec for a short time, but 
the Hurons would not return to their home without a priest. 
So Jogues took his place in the canoe and set out for Lake 
Huron. A glance at the map will show what that means, 
but a detailed description by Bressani, who made the same 
journey ten years later, will help us to better appreciate its 
hardships. 

" The distance," he says, " is more than 900 miles over 
dangerous rivers and great lakes, whose storms are like 
those of the ocean, especially on one, which is 1200 miles in 
circumference. The greatest danger, however, is on the 
rivers. I say ' rivers ' because there are several, and we 
can only follow the St. Lawrence for 400 miles. After that 
we have to make our way over other lakes and streams 
which we reach by skirting rapids and precipices until we 
finally arrive at the great Lake Huron, which is known as 
the * Fresh Water Sea.' 

" On our journey we meet with about sixty cascades, 
some of them falling from a great height. To get around 
them we have to carry our boats and provisions and lug- 
gage, or at times drag our canoes through the rapids for 
four, eight, or ten miles ; a labor which is attended with 
great peril, for often the water is up to our waists or necks, 
and is very cold, and if we are caught in the current we are 
in danger of being swept away and lost. But it is com- 
monly to be preferred to the portage, which means making 
our way in our bare feet through dense forests, or through 
pools and marshes, where we have to wade, helping our- 
selves perhaps by a fallen tree which may serve as a bridge, 

10 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

but which is often as dano^erous and disagreeable as the 
water and mud. Swarms of insects follow us, and there is 
also constant danger of dying from starvation. For on 
these journeys the provisions, which are nothing but corn, 
have to serve for going and returning, and to lighten the 
load a portion is often concealed in the woods, to be used 
on the return trip, but these stores are frequently discov- 
ered by other Indians, or dug up by the bears, or rotted by 
the rain and dampness. In any of these events we have 
nothing to do but to fast, and paddle away until by hunt- 
ing or fishing we obtain some relief. If the journey is 
made late in the year there is a likelihood of finding the 
rivers and lakes frozen, and then there is danger of dying 
of hunger and cold ; or, if we escape that, we may have to 
spend six months in the woods, hunting to live rather than 
journeying to reach the desired country. Arriving there, 
other difficulties await us." 

He says nothing of the lurking Iroquois all along the 
route, from whom a horrible death could be expected at 
each step of the journey. 

Such was Jogues' first experience of missionary life. 
Living on Indian corn and water, sleeping on rocks and 
in the woods, paddling day after day against a rapid cur- 
rent, dragging heavy burdens over the long portages, a 
part of the time with a sick boy on his shoulders, were not 
things he had been brought up to, but he survived them 
all, and with a light heart staggered through the triple 
stockade of the Indian town of Ihonitiria, and fell into the 
arms of de Brebeuf and his companions, whose delight was 
the greater as his coming was unexpected. 

We have no means of identifying this lad whom Father 
Jogues carried through the forests, and whose life he prob- 
ably saved. He may have been an Indian, but it is just 
possible that he was no other than young Jean Amiot, who 
grew up to be a great favorite of the Hurons, and a famous 
fighter against their hereditary foes, the Iroquois. The rea- 
son of this supposition is that shortly after Jogues' arrival 
in Huronia we find on the list of servants of the mission the 

II 



ISAAC JOGUES 

name " Jean Amiot, boy." Of his family we know nothing, 
but it is a characteristic feature of those heroic days that a 
mere boy should be willing to go so far into the wilderness 
with the missionaries, where his life was in such constant 
danger. 

Quite unexpectedly Amiot appears again in connection 
with Jogues eleven years later. On September 17th, 1647, 
viz., eleven months after Jogues' death, he came down from 
Three Rivers to Quebec with an Iroquois warrior, whom he 
had captured in battle. It turned out that his prisoner was 
the very man who had murdered the missionary. Other In- 
dians recognized him, and he admitted the crime. The culprit 
was put to death, but before being led to execution was 
baptized, and was given the name of his victim, Isaac. The 
record of this baptism is signed by Druillettes, who had 
been sent down to New England at the same time that 
Jogues started on the fatal journey to the Mohawk. 

After the execution of the Iroquois, Amiot returned to 
Three Rivers, but that same year he and his friend 
Francois Marguerie were drowned in the St. Lawrence. 
The entire colony lamented the untimely death of these two 
young men, whose stainless reputations had won for them 
the afifection and esteem of white men and Indians alike. 

But to return to Jogues. His cheerful appearance on 
arriving at the Huron Mission was only assumed. In a 
few days he was down with a fever, which the others caught 
from him, and the bark cabin became a hospital ; a wretched 
one indeed, for they had only mats for beds, and a decoction 
of roots for their whole supply of drugs. Moreover, the cold 
of November was upon them and there was nothing to eat. 
Le Mercier writes : " We had a hen which gave us an egg, 
but not every day. We used to watch for the egg and 
then debate as to who should refuse it." It was a poor out- 
look for Father Jogues, and his condition soon became 
alarming. He was bleeding profusely from the nostrils and 
the blood could not be staunched. It may go against mod- 

12 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

ern practice, but the Relations tell us " hence we decided to 
bleed him. The great question was where to find a sur- 
geon. IVe zverc all so skilful in this trade that the patient did 
not kno'iv who should open the vein for him, and ci'ery one of us 
zvas zi'aiting for the benediction of the Father Superior to take 
the lance and do the zvork." Ordinary people would like to 
have better medical assurance than a benediction. So 
Father Jogues, whose whole surgical experience consisted 
in " having bled a savage very successfully on the way up," 
took the lance and did it himself, furnishing thus a fair 
sample of the cool courage he had at command. The 
Relations very naively say in referring to the " savage who 
was bled successfully " that " what was wanting in skill 
was supplied by charity." 

When the missionaries recovered, a pestilence broke out 
among the people, and hundreds of them died. The medi- 
cine men tried to conjure it away, and when the wild and 
indecent orgies which they ordered were ineffectual, they 
blamed the pestilence and their own failure on the mis- 
sionaries and clamored for their death. 

It was on this occasion that, fully expecting to be mur- 
dered, the little band of priests assembled at Ossossane. 
De Brebeuf had come over from Ihonitiria, and he boldly 
walked into the wigwam where the sachems were deliberat- 
ing about when and how to kill him and his associates. He 
remonstrated, and pleaded, and explained, but he was 
listened to in gloomy silence, until at last, amid muttered 
threats of vengeance, the little group of condemned men 
withdrew to Ragueneau's hut, where, imder the light of a 
torch, they wrote a letter of farewell to their friends at 
Quebec. They were about to be put to death, they said, 
and their only sorrow was that they had not been able to 
suft'er more for the Faith. Jogues was not actually present 
at this meeting, for he was unable to leave his little mission 
of Tenaustaye, which was then the most unfriendly of all 
the Huron villages, and where, as well as at Ossossane, he 



ISAAC JOGUES 

might be tomahawked at any moment. But his name was 
appended to the document, for he expected to be put to 
death hke the rest. The letter was given to a faithful Indian, 
who brought it to its destination. For one reason or an- 
other the savages did not carry out their threat, but every 
hour was filled with terror. " The missionaries," says 
Parkman, " were like men who trod on the lava-crust of a 
volcano palpitating with the throes of a coming eruption, 
while the molten death beneath their feet gleamed white hot 
from a thousand crevices." Finally the plague ceased, but 
out of fickleness or hatred for the place, Ihonitiria was 
abandoned by the Indians, and the Fathers established the 
mission of Ste. Marie, which became the center of all their 
work for many years, and the one for which they alwa}"S 
manifested the greatest attachment. Parkman regrets that 
the Jesuits wrote so little about it. 

If you take the train at Toronto and travel north through 
the forests, which are still dense enough to attract the 
hunter, but which the lumbermen are rapidly clearing, you 
arrive at Lake Simcoe, from the northern end of which 
flows the little River AXA'e into Georgian Bay, which is the 
eastern portion of Lake Huron. On that river was built 
the new mission. It was fortified, because it was intended 
to be a place of refuge for fugitive Indians, a storehouse 
for provisions, and a home where the missionaries could 
come from the forests and lakes to restore their courage by 
meditation and prayer. 

A branch of the Grand Trunk which runs north to Mid- 
land and Penetanguishene brings you within a few hundred 
feet of that once famous establishment. You can still trace 
llie lines of the walls, which are laid in hydraulic cement, 
and are said to be a puzzle to engineers, for there is no 
cement in the neighborhood, and it could not have been 
brought a thousand miles from Quebec. At the four corners 
are bastions, and around it is a moat now filled with rubbish, 

14 



THE DISCOVERER OE EAKE GEORGE 

which when in use afforded easy access for l)oats from the 
river and lake. 

Eatlier iMartin, the famous Rector of St. Mary's College 
of Montreal, who has done more than anyone else to revive 
the memory of those old heroes of the seventeenth centurv. 
and wdio inspired Gilmary Shea to carry on the work, visited 
Ste. Marie in 1859. He was accredited by the Canadian 
Government to make the investigations. 

" Without difficulty." he says, " we found the ruins of 
Eort Ste. Marie. Its walls, in good masonry, rose a metre 
above the ground. It was in the form of a long parallelo- 
gram, with bastions at the angles, and in spite of some 
peculiarities, of wdiich at the present day it is difficult to 
understand the reason, one recognizes in the construction 
an acquaintance with military engineering carried out with 
great care. The curtains on the west and north are com- 
plete, but there are no traces of them on the south and east. 
Probably solid palisades vdiich were subsequently destroyed 
by fire were placed there. There was no attack to be feared 
on that quarter ; besides, on those two sides there is a dee]) 
ditch which protects the enclosure. The south one extends to 
the river and so formed a shelter for the canoes. It widens 
out into basins at three places. Along this ditch on the 
south is a vast field, protected on the side facing the countrv 
by a redan, whose earth parapet is still distinguishable. In 
that field were the wigwams of the visiting Indians, the 
hospital, and guest-house. At the side of the southeast 
bastion was a square construction with a very thick wall, 
doubtless intended as the basis of a future observation 
tower. We opened a trench on the inside angle of the north- 
east bastion, and at the depth of 60 c. found portions of a 
burned plank, large nails, pieces of copper and the bones 
of beavers. The interior constructions were all in wood, 
which explains how nothing is left except a chimney in 
ruins." 

Of course the missionaries were not cooped up in the 
fort. The soil around was carefully cultivated and produced 
an abundant harvest. There was such an amount of maize 
in 1649 t'l'i^t the Superior thought they had a supply that 
would last for three years. They kept fowl and swdne and 

15 



ISAAC JOGUES 

cattle, and the wonder is how the animals were transported 
to that distant place. It was a god-send for the poor, starv- 
ing Indians, and at times three or four thousand of them 
were within the walls of Ste. Marie. No doubt, while being 
fed and cared for, they wondered at the unexplainable 
charity that prompted it all. But it was not only in famine 
times that they were harbored. On every alternate Satur- 
day they came in crowds from the farthest villages, and 
during Saturday, Sunday and a part of Monday they were 
bounteously feasted, and of course instructed and made to 
feel the influence of the solemn religious rites performed 
in the great church, which, for the Indians, was a marvel of 
beauty, but, as Ragueneau deprecatingly wrote, " very poor 
for the rest of us." Nothing is now left of all this but the 
stones of the foundation, which for historical, if not for 
religious, motives ought to be made a public monument. 

To this central mission the Fathers all came for their 
conferences and annual retreats, and possibly it might be of 
interest to quote the well-known passage of Parkman, even 
if it is colored somewhat by his poetry and lack of spiritual 
appreciation. It is found, in his Jesuits in NortJi America. 

" Hither," he says, " while the Fathers are gathered from 
their scattered stations at one of their periodical meetings, 
let us, too, repair and join them. We enter at the eastern 
gate of the fortification, midway in the wall between its 
northern and southern bastions, and pass to the hall, where 
at a rude table, spread with ruder fare, all the household are 
assembled — laborers, domestics, soldiers, priests. 

" It was a scene that might recall a remote half feudal, 
half patriarchal age, when under the smoky rafters of his 
antique hall some warlike thane sat, with kinsmen and de- 
pendents, ranged down the long board, each in his degree. 
Here doubtless Ragueneau, the Father Superior, held the 
place of honor; and for chieftains, scarred with Danish battle- 
axes, was seen a band of thoughtful men clad in threadbare 
garb of black, their brows swarthy from exposure, yet 
marked with the lines of intellect and a fixed enthusiasm of 
purpose. Here was Bressani, scarred with firebrand and 

i6 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

knife ; Chabanel, once a professor of rhetoric in France, now 
a missionary bound by a self-imposed vow to a life from 
which his nature recoiled ; the fanatical Chaumonot, whose 
character savored of his peasant birth — for the grossest 
fungus of superstition that ever grew under the shadow of 
Rome was not too much for his omnivorous credulity, and 
mysteries and miracles were his daily food ; yet, such as his 
faith was, he was ready to die for it. Garnier, beardless like 
a woman, was of a far finer nature. His religion was of the 
afifections and the sentiments ; and his imagination, warmed 
with the ardor of his faith, shaped the ideal form of his wor- 
ship into visible realities. Brebeuf sat conspicuous among 
his brethren, portly and tall, his short moustache and beard 
grizzled — for he was fifty-six years old. If he seemed im- 
passive it was because one overmastering principle had 
merged and absorbed all the impulses of his nature and all 
the faculties of his mind. The enthusiasm which with many 
is fitful was with him the current of his life — solemn and 
deep as the tide of destiny. The Divine Trinity, the Virgin, 
the Saints, Heaven and Hell, Angels and Fiends — to him 
these alone were real, all else were naught. Gabriel Lale- 
mant, nephew of Jerome Lalemant, Superior at Quebec, was 
Brebeuf's colleague at the mission of St. Ignace. His slen- 
der frame and delicate features gave him an appearance of 
youth, though he had reached middle life; and, as in the 
case of Garnier, the fervor of his mind sustained him 
through exertions of which he seemed ph3'sically incapable. 
" Of the rest of that company little has come down to us 
but the bare record of their missionary toils ; and we may 
ask in vain what youthful enthusiasm, what broken hope 
or faded dream, turned the current of their lives, and sent 
them from the heart of civilization to the savage outpost of 
the world. No element was wanting in them for the 
achievement of such a success as that to which they aspired 
— neither the transcendental zeal, nor a matchless discipline, 
nor a practical sagacity very seldom surpassed in the pur- 
suits where men strive for wealth and place, and if they 
were destined to disappointment, it ivas the result of external 
causes, against which no power of theirs could have insured 
them." 

Barring the malignant characterization of Chaumonot, 
which is like a shot from an ambush, as well as the nonsense 

17 



ISAAC JOGUES 

a1)Oiit disappointed liopes and faded dreams, the picture is 
vivid enough to be quoted. We regret that the figure of 
Togues does not appear in that " half-feudal, half-patriarchal 
group"; especially as it was his "practical sagacity very 
seldom surpassed in the pursuits where men strive for 
wealth and place " that prompted his superiors to appoint 
him to superintend the construction of those very works 
which Parkman so much admires. 

That he was the chief builder of Ste. Marie dispels the 
common impression about his being little else than a re- 
ligious enthusiast eagerly seeking death. On the contrary, 
he was the most practical of all the missionaries. What- 
ever he undertook he scrutinized carefully in all its bear- 
ings ; its difficulties were weighed ; its dangers estimated ; 
but " once the word ' go ' was given," wrote his Superior, 
" then neither man nor devil could stop him." 

His first apostolic work away from Ste. Marie was among 
the Petuns or Tobacco nation ; a name which indicates the 
occupation of that tribe. With him was Garnier, who some 
}ears later was to die under the blow of a tomahawk when, 
after being riddled with bullets, he was crawling on the 
ground to absolve a dying Huron. Garnier and Jogues had 
been consecrated priests together at the same altar in 
France a few years before. 

Holy as they were, their efforts failed. Abandoned by 
their guides, they had to make their beds in the snow ; were 
driven out of the wigv/ams in the dead of night; and were 
followed by excited Indians with threats and imprecations 
from village to village. They did nothing at all but baptize 
one poor old squaw. But possibly her prayers were power- 
ful with God, for the next year Garnier returned and estab- 
lished a prosperous mission among his hard-hearted Petuns. 

Meantime a number of Ojibways or Chippewas had 
come down from Lake Superior to take part in the great 
decennial feast of the dead with their friends the Hurons. 
Astonished at what they saw, they asked for a mission in 

i8 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

their own country, and Jogues and Ra}-mbault were 
Hssigned to the work. I'hey stepped into their Httle bark 
;anoe on September 17. 1641, and paddled for weeks along- 
Lhe eastern shore of Georgian Bay, and then across the 
.ipper reaches of Lake Lluron and finally arrived after many 
dangers and hardships at the place which is now a great 
renter of commerce, vSault Ste. Alarie. The missionaries 
jave it that name. 

You say to the dwellers in those regions : " That must 
lave been a journey of two or three hundred miles," and 
they smile at your simplicity and answer: "more like a 
thousand because of the way a canoe has to travel. A 
shell like that can never make a cut across the open." 

They reached their destination, and it is a distinction 
worth noting that they were the first white men to stand 
Du the shores of Lake Superior ; for though Nicolet had. 
been in those parts before them, yet it is more than likely 
that he Vv^ent down through the Straits of Mackinac and 
explored Lake Michigan, while they kept on to the north 
md west. It is commonly asserted, indeed, that Nicolet 
really visited Sault Ste. Marie, but the claim does not 
ippear to be sustained by documentary evidence. 

At the Sault they met two thousand Indians, wdiom 
fogues addressed in their own language, assuring them that 
\itev reporting to his Superior he would establish a mission 
there. " Then," he added, " after instructing you we shall 
JO thither," and he erected a cross wliich faced tlie country 
yl the Sioux, who were settled about the headwaters of the 
Mississippi. That vv-as thirty years before ]\larquette 
started from Mackinac to find the great river. jogues 
would most likely have attempted it had he been spared. 
In fact, as w^e see in Le Jeune's Rdafioji of 1636, all the 
missionaries were eager to find the river. But Jogues never 
returned to Lake Superior. As will appear later, he was 
captured by the enemy and killed on the far-off Mohawk. 
But it is more than likely that by securing the good-will 

10 



ISAAC JOGUES 

of the savages of those parts he made it possible for the 
great Marquette to be a missionary without being a martyr. 
It is very pleasant to meet in Picturesque America a descrip- 
tion of this scene. 

" Two hundred and thirty-two years ago," says the 
writer, " the first white man stood on the shores of Lake 
Superior. Before him was assembled a crowd of Indians — 
two thousand Ojibways and other Algonquins — listening 
with curiosity to the strange tidings he brought, and in 
some instances allowing the mystic drops to be poured on 
their foreheads ; for, like all the first explorers of the lake 
country, this man w^as a missionary. Only religious zeal 
could brave the wilderness and its savages, cold and hunger, 
torture and death, for no hope of earthly reward, for no 
gold mines, for no fountain of youth, but simply for the 
salvation of souls. And whatever posterity may think of 
the utility of their work, it must at least admire the courage 
and devotion of these Fathers, who, almost without excep- 
tion, laid down their lives for the cause. What can a man 
do more? Five years later came the turn of this first white 
man of Lake Superior, murdered by the Indians in the 
forests near the Mohawk River." 



20 




ISAAC JOGUES, S.J. 



CHAPTER II 

The Capture 

The two explorers paddled rapidly back to Georgian 
Bay to announce the good news and to prepare for the great 
enterprise, but Raymbault was in a dying condition from 
hunger and exposure, and someone had to go with him to 
Quebec, where possibly his life might be saved. Inci- 
dentally also the mission had to lay in supplies, for nothing 
had come from below for three years. Who would attempt 
the perilous journey? Jogues maintained that he could be 
■most easily spared, though no one shared that view with 
him, and he succeeded in persuading his superiors to let 
him make the attempt. A thousand miles intervened 
between the River Wye and Quebec, and at every moment 
there was a menace of death from dangerous cataracts or 
wild beasts or prowling Iroquois. But they reached Quebec 
in safety, though with much suffering, and there Raymbault 
soon breathed his last. He was the first Jesuit to die in 
Canada. He was buried by the side of Champlain ; but the 
exact spot where the priest and the soldier were laid the 
people of Quebec cannot tell you to-day. 

Jogues was successful in obtaining supplies, and he set 
out on his return journey with his canoes well packed with 
provisions. With him were about forty persons ; one a 
famous Huron chief, Teondechoren, who was thought to 
bear a charmed life, so often had he escaped injury in battle ; 
another a former sorcerer, Ahitsasteari, who had become a 
Christian, and was now as pious as he had formerly been 
wicked. Rene Goupil and William Couture, two domics or 
laymen who for religious motives had devoted themselves 
to the help of the missionaries, also made part of the con- 
voy ; and finally Theresa, an Indian girl, who had been 
educated by the Ursulines of Quebec, and who was now 

21 



ISAAC JOGUES 

unwilling'ly leaving her beloved nuns and returning to her 
country to assist by her piety and knowledge in spreading 
the faith. She is to disappear in the forests, only to be 
found again just before Jogues' martyrdom. 

Knowing the dangers that confronted them, the Go\'- 
crnor offered tlie convoy a detachment of soldiers, but the 
Indians, who never appreciate danger until the enemy 
appears, indignantly refused all help. They were able to 
take care of themselves. But they were only a day's journe"^' 
beyond Three Rivers, which they had left on August i, 
1642, Avhen a suspicious trail revealed itself. The great 
chief said haughtily: ''If it is the trail of friends there is 
no fear; if it is an cnem}'"s we arc strong enough to con- 
quer "; but a war-vvhdop and a volley of musketry soon told 
another story. They were ambushed by almost twice their 
number. There were seventy Mohawks in all, and signifi- 
cantly enough they were led by a Huron apostate. Regard- 
less of the danger and th.inking only of baptizing one of the 
Indians whom he had been instructing, Jogues addressed 
himself to that task while the battle was raging, and when 
he rose from wh.ere he had been kneeling he found the 
greater number of his Hurons in flight, and those vv^ho had 
held their ground already in the hands of tlie enemy. What 
should he do? He was as fleet of foot as any Indian and 
could have escaped if he wished. But before his eyes he 
saw his beloved Rene Goupil and some of his Huron Chris- 
tians l)ound hand and foot, and the thought of deserting 
them never entered liis mind. To the amazement of the 
Indians he strode out from his concealment and stood beside 
them. It is worth noting tliat the one who made the most 
splendid fight in this encounter was Goupil. When nearly 
every one had fled he remained almost alone facing the 
whole host of enemies and fighting fiercely. The fact is 
worth remembering, for there is such stress laid on his pietv 
and gentleness that we are prone to fancy him as timid and 
shrinking and somewhat feminine in his disposition, and 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

not the heroic fighter that this occasion showed him to be. 
Jognes describes him as " a man of remarkable intrepidity." 

The deep affection with which the priest was regarded 
by the rest of the company revealed itself as the battle was 
ending. Couture was well out of reach when he discovered 
that the Father was not with him. He deliberately turned 
back, though he had to fight his way through a crowd of 
Iroquois, who almost cut him to pieces in his effort to reach 
the side of Jogues. The " invulnerable " Huron chief, who 
had taken to flight, came back of his own accord also, 
though he knew it meant torture and a horrible death. 

It was while embracing and consoling Couture, who was 
brought in covered with blood, that Father Jogues v/as 
felled to the earth by the sticks and clubs of the Iroquois. 
He awoke to consciousness only to find two savages gnaw- 
ing his fingers off with their teeth. As the battle was now 
over, the captives were flung into canoes, and the party 
hurried up the stream to where the Sorel or Richelieu flows 
into the St. Lawrence, but not before they had cut a record 
of their exploit on the trees of the forest. The exact spot 
where the battle was fought has been forgotten. 

Nothing more disastrous could have happened to the 
missions than this capture of Jogues. " Had we received 
those supplies," wrote Father Le Mercier, " we could have 
held out indefinitely." But of course Jogues was not re- 
sponsible. He knew too well the needs of his brethren and 
the advantage of having soldiers as protectors on that peril- 
ous journey, and he had seen too many an example of the 
foolish self-reliance of the Flurons. But the " invulnerable " 
chief had decided, and the ruin of all the missions of the 
Northwest was only a matter of time. 

Their course lay up the Richelieu to Lake Champiain 
and Lake George and over to the Mohawk. As they hurried 
along they were beaten with sticks and clubs ; their wounds 
were torn open by the long nails of the Indians; they were 



ISAAC JOGUES 

refused food and drink, and at night were picketed to the 
earth to prevent their escape. 

The traveler on Lake Champlain to-day is shown an 
island which the State has set aside as a government reser- 
vation. It is marked Jogues Island. It is thought to have 
been the scene of the occurrences which Jogues describes 
at this stage of his journey. A number of braves on the 
warpath had halted there awaiting the raiders, and their 
thirst for blood had to be satiated by the usual savage pas- 
time of the gauntlet. " We were made to go up the slope 
from the shore between two lines of savages armed with 
clubs and sticks and knives," writes Jogues. " I was the 
last, and blows were showered on me. I fell on the ground 
and I thought my end had come, but they lifted me up all 
streaming with blood and carried me more dead than alive 
to the platform." The usual tortures of gashing and 
stabbing and beating and burning and distending followed. 
More joints of the martyr's fingers were gnawed or burned 
ofif, and at one time he was on the point of consecrating that 
island of Lake Champlain by a horrible death at the stake. 
The torture was drawing to an end, and a huge savage stood 
above him with a knife to slash the nose from his face — the 
usual prelude of death by fire. Jogues looked at him calmly, 
and, to the surprise of all, the executioner strode away. 
Again the effort was made with the same result. Some 
unseen power averted death at that time. His martyrdom 
was to be more protracted, and at another place. 

From there they resumed their journey, stopping, how- 
ever, to repeat the sport whenever a new band was met 
with. It took them till the tenth of August to reach the 
southern end of Lake George ; and then for four days the 
wretched captives dragged themselves along the trail which 
passes by what is now Saratoga, bleeding and famished, 
supporting their miserable life by the fruit or berries they 
could pluck from the trees or the roots they could dig up 
in the woods. They were loaded meantime with heavy 

24 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

packs, and beaten when they faltered or fell on the road. 
On the eve of the Assumption. August 14th, 1642, they 
arrived on the north bank of the Mohawk, opposite the vil- 
lage of Ossernenon, a little above where the Schoharie 
Creek flows into the river. 

A conch-shell, an instrument usually reserved for re- 
ligious rites, announced their coming, and men and women 
and children swarmed down to the river bank to give the 
victims a savage welcome. It was the gauntlet again, and 
the miserable line moved up the steep ascent ; Jogues, as 
usual, coming last. " I saw Rene in front of me," he after- 
wards wrote: "he fell, horribly mangled and covered with 
blood ; not a spot of white was visible as he was dragged 
to the place of torture." But while grieving for his friend 
and forgetting his own pitiable state, he himself was struck 
by a huge ball of iron in the middle of the back, and fell 
gasping on the pathway. He struggled to his feet and 
followed the procession to the platform, where the usual 
horrors of such performances were carried out in all their 
details, till darkness brought them to an end. But even 
then their sufferings were not over, for they were pinioned 
to the earth and given over to the boys of the camp, who 
amused themselves the greater part of the night by sticking 
knives and prongs into the victims, and heaping coals and 
hot ashes upon their naked bodies to see them writhe in 
agony. Jogues narrates that Rene's breast was a pitiable 
sight after this torture. He does not allude to his own 
condition, except to say that he was more fortunate in being 
able to throw off the burning coals. 

One incident occurred, on this first day at Ossernenon, 
which is worthy of special notice, as illustrating the wonder- 
ftd self-control of the great martyr. A captive Indian 
woman, a Christian, and chosen no doubt for that reason, 
was compelled, under menace of death, to saw off with a 
jagged shell the thumb of the priest. She complied, though 
horror-stricken; and when it fell on the ground, Jogues 

25 



ISAAC JOGUES 

picked it iip, and, as he himself humbly says, " I presented 
it to Thee. O my God ! in remembrance of the sacrifices 
which for the last seven years I had ofTered on the altars of 
Thy Church and as an atonement for the want of love and 
reverence of which I have been guilty in touching Thy 
Sacred Body." " Throw it down," whispered Couture, at 
his side, " or they will make you eat it." He cast it aside, 
and possibly some prowling dog of the camp devoured it. 
It would be hard to find a parallel for such an act in the 
annals of the martyrs. 

The next day the tortures were repeated, and then the 
neighboring villages of Andagarron and Tionnontoguen, 
the first about seven, the second fifteen miles to the west, 
had to be regaled in similar fashion, until the ferocity of 
the savages was sated. 

By this time the other captives were either killed or sent 
elsewhere among the tribes; Jogues and Goupil alone 
remained. It had been decided first to burn them at the 
stake ; other counsels, however, prevailed, and they were 
brought back to Ossernenon. On the seventh of Septem- 
ber the new^s of their capture had reached Fort Orange, 
and the Commandant, Arendt van Corlear, in person, ac- 
companied by Jean Labatie and Jacob Jansen, came to 
arrange for their ransom. But the news had arrived that 
the war party which had tortured Jogues on Lake Cham- 
plain had been badly beaten at the fort which Montmagny 
had hastily thrown up at the mouth of the Richelieu after 
the capture of Jogues. Furious with rage on that account, 
they would not give up the prisoners. Once again there 
was question of the stake. 

Soon afterwards, Goupil was killed for making the sign 
of the cross on the head of a child. It occurred when the 
lonely captives were returning to the village reciting their 
beads. A savage stole up behind them and buried his toma- 
hawk in the skull of Goupil, who fell on his face uttering 
the Holy Name. Jogues seized him in his arms, gave him 

26 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

the last absolution, and then waited his own turn, but the 
victim was torn from his embrace, and two more blows by 
the murderer ended the work. " Thus," says Jogues, " on 
the twenty-ninth of September, this angel of innocence and 
martyr of Jesus Christ was immolated in his thirty-fifth 
year, for Him who had given His life for his ransom. He 
had consecrated his heart and his soul to God, and his 
work and his life to the welfare of the poor Indians." 

The scene of this tragedy, as far as can be made out 
from the indications left by Father Jogues, is somewhere 
along the line of crosses that have been recently erected 
at Auriesville. They are on what is called the Hill of 
Prayer ; that is to say, the slope which the two captives 
were descending when the Indian interrupted their recital 
of the beads by the blow of his tomahawk. 

The next morning Father Jogues started out to find the 
corpse of his friend, but was prevented from going on with 
the search. On the following morning, however, in spite 
of threats to kill him, he set out with an Algonquin and 
discovered the remains in the stream at the foot of the hill. 
The body had been given to the boys of the village, who 
had stripped it and dragged it there for sport. It was 
already partially eaten by the dogs. All that he could do 
at the time was to hide it deeper in the stream, intending to 
return later to give it burial. Two days passed and he was 
still unable to carry out his purpose. When he sought it 
again it was gone. His description of this search reads 
like a threnody : 

" I went to the spot where I had laid the remains. I 
climbed the hill at the foot of which the torrent runs. I 
descended it. I went through the woods on the other side ; 
my labor was useless. In spite of the depth of the water, 
which came up to my waist, for it had rained all night, and 
in spite of the cold, I sounded with my feet and my stafif to 
see whether the current had not carried the corpse further 
off. I asked every Indian I saw whether he knew what had 
become of it. Oh! what sighs I uttered and what tears I 



ISAAC JOGUES 

shed to mingle with the waters of the torrent, while I 
chanted to Thee, O my God! the psalms of Holy Church 
in the Office of the Dead." 

After the thaw he found some bones, and the skull, 
which had been crushed in several places. 

" I reverently kissed the hallowed remains and hid them 
in the earth, that I may one day, if such be the will of God, 
enrich them with a Christian and holy ground. He deserves 
the name of martyr not only because he has been murdered 
by the enemies of God and His Church while laboring in 
ardent charity for his neighbor, but, more than all, because 
he was killed for being at prayer, and notably for making 
the sign of the cross." 

The exact place that holds the remains of this illustrious 
man whose brief career was so apostolic, and at the same 
time so romantic, has never been identified. Perhaps it 
may be God's will to reveal it at some future time, so that 
a fitting memorial might mark the spot where the heart- 
broken Father Jogues knelt weeping over the body of his 
friend. 

Nowadays the ravine where this tender and pathetic 
parting of the friends took place is the favorite spot at 
Auriesville for the throngs of people who gather there for 
the annual pilgrimage. At the end of the day they wend 
their way in solemn procession down the steep incline to 
this wooded hollow through which rushes the creek which 
once covered the body of Goupil. The stream is boisterous 
and full in the early spring, but almost dry in the heat of 
summer. Here and there rustic bridges span it. At one 
end of the glen a high wall of rocks, from which great 
trees protrude, rises sheer above you. At its base is a pulpit 
made of the trunks and branches of trees. There the pil- 
grims gather for the concluding ceremonies and to listen 
to the words of counsel and exhortation, or the repetition 
of the tragic story of the past. The perpendicular cliff 
behind sends the words of the preacher far into the lonely 

28 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

woods around, which ahnost seem to awe the Hstening 
multitude to silence. Beyond the creek a thick cluster of 
pines rises above a huge boulder, which serves as an altar, 
and when the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is 
given there, the glimmer of the lights in the deep shadow 
of the pines, the robes of the priests, and the scarlet and 
white of the acolytes, with the kneeling multitude beyond 
the stream bowed in silent adoration as the Sacred Host is 
lifted above their heads, while no sound is heard in the 
densely peopled solitude save the tinkling of the bell and 
the lapping of the waves on the rocks, you have a picture 
that can never be effaced* from your memory. How dif- 
ferent is all this from the terrible twenty-ninth of Septem- 
ber of long ago ! 

When Goupii was dead Jogues was alone, and began 
his awful captivity of more than a year, each moment of 
which was a martyrdom. In the Relation which his Superiors 
commanded him to write he has left us a partial account 
of the horrors he endured. Employed in the filthiest and 
most degrading -occupations, he was regarded with greater 
contempt than the most degraded squaw of the village. 
Heavy burdens were heaped on his crippled and mangled 
shoulders, and he was made to tramp fifty, sixty and some- 
times a hundred miles after his savage masters, who 
delighted to exhibit him wherever they went. His naked 
feet left bloody tracks upon the ice or flints of the road ; 
his flesh was rotting with disease, and his wounds were 
gangrened ; he was often beaten to the earth by the fists 
or clubs of crazy and drunken Indians; and more than once 
he saw the tomahawk above his head and heard his death 
sentence pronounced. The wretched deerskin they per- 
mitted him to wear was swarming with vermin ; he was 
often in a condition of semi-starvation as he crouched in a 
corner of the filthy wigwam and saw the savages gorging 
themselves with meat, which had been first offered to the 
demons, and which he therefore refused to eat, though his 

29 



ISAAC JOGUES 

savage masters raged against this implied contempt of their 
gods. According to General Clark, that refusal to recognize 
the Indian deity was the determining cause of Jogues' death. 
But over and above all his bodily agony, his sensitive and 
holy soul was made to undergo a greater torture by the 
sight of the shameless moral turpitude of the savages and 
the awful spectacle thrust upon him as they roasted and 
devoured their captives. 

Meanwhile he was baptizing what dying children he 
could discover, and comforting the Huron captives who 
were brought into camp, sometimes even at the risk of his 
life rushing into the flames to baptize them as they were 
burning at the stake. 

The wonder of it all is hov/ human endurance could be 
equal to such a strain. Indeed only the help of supernatural 
grace can explain how he did not die or lose his mind. 
That God gave him such assistance there is no doubt, for 
we find in the record he has left that he spent hour after 
liour kneeling in prayer in the deep snow of the forest, pro- 
tected from the wintry blast of the storm only by a few pine 
jranches. The Indians looked with terror at the cross 
which he used to cut in the trunks of trees, and took his 
prayers for incantations, often threatening to kill him when 
he was so engaged. We learn that he was at times favored 
with heavenly visions during that long martyrdom. He 
heard the songs of angels above the roar of the tempest ; he 
saw the palisaded town transformed into a celestial city, 
and beheld the Divine Master as a King in royal robes. Be- 
sides these supernatural consolations, he had a human com- 
forter also ; a poor old squaw in whose cabin he lived and 
whom he called his " Aunt." She would try in her rude way 
to heal his wounds ; would weep over them when she could 
not succeed ; and invariably warned him of any danger that 
she happened to hear of. We do not know if he converted 
the poor old creature. We cannot help thinking that he did. 

There is another touching incident of rewarded affection 

30 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

that occurred during his journeys. He once stumbled into a 
miserable cabin where he found a dying Indian. " Do you 
not know me? " said tiie sufferer. " It was I who cut you 
down when you were suspended by ropes at Ossernenon 
and were just about to die." God evidently rewarded the 
poor wretch for this act of humanity. He received baptism 
before he expired. No doubt also a poor squaw whom he 
saved from a furious torrent, plunging in to save her and 
her babe while the Indians looked on apathetically, must 
have done her best to repay him. 

Month after month dragged on, and repeated efforts were 
made to purchase him from the Mohawks. Even the So- 
kokis of distant Maine, who had been well treated by the 
French, came to intercede for him. In fact he tells us him- 
self that he might have escaped, but could not find it in his 
heart to do so while there were any Christian captives to 
whom he might be of service. His baptisms that year, he 
informs us, amounted to seventy altogether, all, of course, 
of persons at the point of death. It is New York's first 
baptismal record. Unfortunately we have only the number, 
not the names. 



31 



CHAPTER III 
The Escape 

Jogries had been a captive for thirteen terrible months, 
when an event occurred which seemed to announce his 
(loom. About a year after his arrival on the Mohawk, 
namely, on June 30, 1643, '""e had secured a scrap of paper, 
and, with full knowledge of the danger, sent a letter to 
Montmagny informing him that the Mohawks were about 
to make a raid on Fort Richelieu. A Huron who had been 
adopted by the Iroquois carried the missive. The garrison 
was warned in time and the Indians were repulsed. They 
must have known of the letter, for instead of fixing it 
somewhere on the trail the Indian entered the fort with 
it, an act which must have been witnessed by his asso- 
ciates. Naturally they attributed the failure of their expe- 
dition to Jogues and sullenly returned to their town. It is 
this action of the missionary that serves as the basis of the 
charge that he was really not put to death for the Faith, 
but only in punishment for this " treachery." 

To this the answer is plain. In the first place, he was 
not put to death then. Consequently the feelings of the 
Indians, at that time, can be eliminated as the motive of 
an execution which took ])lace three years later, unless those 
same feelings persisted, wholly or in part; which was not 
the case. Secondly, it may be safely asserted, that even if 
he had been ])ut to death then, he would have been a martyr 
of charit}-. To deliberately accept death in order to save 
one's brethren from being wantonly massacred by im- 
placable savages led by an apostate Christian, is heroic vir- 
tue fully worthy of canonization. Let a prisoner in the 
hands of a civilized enemy do something similar to save his 
countrymen and he will be immortalized as the nation's 
hero. Thirdly, anyone acquainted with the code of Indian 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

ethics knows that once wampum belts are exchanged, all 
causes of complaint, past and present, are obliterated. That 
was their recognized purpose. They were treaties of peace, 
and an Indian accepting them would not remember the mur- 
der of his own brother. We have notable examples of 
this in Indian history. It was even adopted by the whites 
themselves. Thus Kondiaronk. " The Rat," was made a 
captain of French troops, and was buried with unusual 
honors after having deliberately caused the most bloody 
massacre in all Canadian history. We have another instance 
in the case of Ouraouhara, the Iroquois, who after having 
been sent to the galleys in France was trusted by Denon- 
ville as his special envoy. Hence, when the presents were 
exchanged later on at Three Rivers, and Jogues was chosen 
as the ambassador of France, all past offences, real or imagi- 
nary, were not only condoned but forgotten, and had no 
influence whatever on subsequent negotiations. Moreover, 
he was killed not by the Mohawks as such — and they were 
the ones who had suffered harm — but by a few fanatics of 
the Bear family, in spite of the protest of the nation; and 
for no other reason than that he was a sorcerer who was 
making the okis and niaiiitoiis of the Mohawks powerless. 
To die for that was to die for the Faith. 

The Dutch were aware of his impending death, and a 
positive order came from Governor Kieft of Manhattan to 
the commandant at Fort Orange to secure his release at all 
risks. Consequently, when, a short time afterwards, Jogues 
arrived at the fort with his captors, the commandant in- 
sisted that he should escape, promising that if he once got 
on board the vessel which was lying in the river he would 
be landed safely in France. 

To his amazement Jogues refused. He could not desert 
his post. He had written in that sense to his Superior in 
Quebec. The worthy and perhaps wrathy Dutchman re- 
monstrated that it was throwing away his life uselessly. 
The Mohawks would not talk to him any longer about re- 

33 



ISAAC JOGUES 

ligious matters, nor would they let him approach the Huron 
or other captives ; and finally, he was made to understand 
that his death was not to be deferred, but was to take place 
as soon as he got back to Ossernenon. He listened to all this 
and then spent the entire night in prayer to consider what 
course was most in conformity with the glory of God and 
the good of souls. In the morning he presented himself to 
the commandant. He would escape and return again when 
peace was restored. 

It was then arranged that during the night he should 
steal out of the place where he had been made to sleep 
among the Iroquois. A small boat would be waiting on the 
shore, and he could paddle to the ship whose sailors had 
fcworn to defend him. All seemed easy except the first step. 
The structure which the Indians occupied with their pris- 
oner was a wooden building about loo feet long, one end of 
which was used as the house of a settler who had married a 
squaw; the rest being given over to the Indians. Going out 
at nightfall to explore the ground, the poor captive was 
nearly devoured by dogs, and was compelled to beat a hasty 
retreat to the cabin, 'ilie charitable Dutchman bandaged 
his wounds in a rough fashion, but the Indians, suspicious 
that something was going on, securely barred the door and 
lay down to sleep alongside of him. Hour after hour passed, 
and he heard the cock crow announcing the dawn. All hope 
was gone, when suddenly a door opened at the other end of 
the building and a white man appeared. Making signs to 
him to quiet the dogs, Jogues stealthily picked his way over 
the prostrate forms of the savages — he would have been 
tomahawked if he awakened them — and succeeded in 
getting into the open. It is characteristic of the man that 
before he began this race for life, he tucked somewhere in 
his miserable rags a wooden cross he had made, and two 
little books of devotion which he had found somewhere or 
other. There was a fence to be cleared. He clambered 
over it, and then running as fast as his mangled legs would 

34 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

allow, made for the river, reaching it in an exhausted state ; 
but alas ! the boat was high and dry in the mud. He cried 
out to the vessel in the stream, but no one heard him. The 
sailors were asleep. At last by superhuman efforts he got 
the boat into the water, and soon after he was climbing up 
the ship's side, a free man. He was more than welcome, 
but his happiness was brief. Furious at the escape of their 
prisoner, the Mohawks threatened to burn the settlement, 
but the commandant laughed at them. He knew perfectly 
well they would not dare to risk a war with the Dutch while 
they were fighting with the French. Nevertheless, for rea- 
sons hard to understand, Jogues was compelled to go ashore 
in the night, though the faithful sailors were loud in their 
condemnation of the act, and was hidden in one of the 
houses while the Indians were parleyed with, and finally 
induced to relinquish their claim on him by the payment of 
three hundred livres. But his whereabouts was kept secret 
for fear of his being tomahawked, and for six weeks he 
lay in a garret within a few feet of the Indians, who en- 
tered the house at pleasure. Often the slightest movement 
or a moan would have betrayed him. The ship, meantime, 
had departed, and the unhappy prisoner was subjected to the 
most brutal treatment by the boor into whose charge he 
had been given. Thus, for instance, he was nearly killed by 
lye water which was given him to drink. Had it not been 
for the kindness of the famous minister. Dominie Megapo- 
lensis, he would have died of ill-treatment and starvation. 
The Dominie was a conspicuous character among the 
Dutch of Governor Kieft's time. He was more than kind 
in this instance, and an affectionate intimacy sprang up be- 
tween him and Father Jogues; the priest laboring strenu- 
ously for his conversion, and the Dominie showing him 
every consideration. In fact he was so outspoken in praise 
of Jogues that he had to answer a charge before the Classis 
of Manhattan of being a Jesuit. His reply may be found 

35 



ISAAC JOGUES 

in the New York State papers, indignantly repelling the 
accusation. 

At last another vessel was ready to sail, and Father 
Jogiies was conducted on board by the chief men of the 
colony, and he and the Dominie came down together to 
Manhattan Island. The crew were jubilant. They all loved 
and admired Jogues and " half-way down," he says, " they 
celebrated my release by stopping at an island which they 
called by my name, and gave evidence of their pleasure by 
the discharge of cannon and the uncorking of bottles." We 
have no more indication than that of what island it was 
that was " half-way down the Hudson," and that w^as 
christened in such a cordial fashion. 

Frequent attempts have been made to locate this island, 
but so far no positive conclusion seems to have been 
reached. Possibly it is the one which is now known as 
Esopus Island. Thither the Jesuit novices from West Park 
used to go on holidays. They at least had no doubt that 
they stood on the holy ground where Father Jogues had 
been a couple of hundred years before. It lies in the centre 
of the stream ; is about half a mile long, and possibly one 
hundred feet at its greatest width. At its southern ex- 
tremity there is a cove which affords the only landing 
place from the river, the rest of the shore being somewhat 
steep and rocky and in one part, if you are a little 
fanciful, it may look to you like a fortification. Someone 
thought that the northern end had the appearance of a 
mackerel's tail, and that may have suggested the name of 
Fish Island, which at times serves to designate the place. 
But romance has also been busy weaving legends. Thus 
if you go over to the eastern side you will find an 
isolated and stunted pine, which is known far and wide as 
" Captain Kidd's Tree," and you may have to listen to all 
sorts of gruesome tales about how the bold buccaneer buried 
his treasures somewhere in the soil and left them to the care 
of the Prince of Darkness. It is curious that Captain Kidd 

36 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

and Father Jog-ucs, who are poles away from each other 
morally, should meet on this little green spot in the Hud- 
son. 

After six days the ship reached New York, and the Gov- 
ernor gave Jogues a most honorable reception, seating him 
beside the Dominie at table, providing for his wants, and 
changing his ragged and half savage costume for a civilized 
dress. Naturally the presence of a priest and a Jesuit on 
Manhattan Island, especially with all the marks of his ter- 
rible sufferings upon him, caused a profound sensation 
among the colonists. They crowded around him to ask 
about his captivity, and it is narrated that, on one occasion, 
a young man fell at his feet and, kissing the mangled hands 
of the priest, exclaimed : " Martyr of Jesus Christ ! Martyr 
of Jesus Christ!" "Are you a Catholic?" asked Jogues. 
" No, I am a Lutheran, but I recognize you as one who has 
suffered for the Master." 

There were only two Catholics in New York at that time 
— one the Portuguese wife of the Ensign, who, singular!}- 
enough, had a picture of St. Aloysius in her room ; the 
other an Irishman who had come up from Maryland. He 
gave Father Jogues intelligence about the Jesuits there 
and profited by the occasion to perform his religious duties. 

The official documents of tine State of New York have 
embodied Jogues' lengthy account (^f the colony as he saw 
it during the month he remained with his Dutch friends. 
He happened to be there jtist when a war was going on 
with the neighboring Indians, chiefly the Weckquaeskeeck, 
eighty of whom had been killed in one encounter and six- 
teen hundred in another ; but he merely mentions it without 
going into details. He would have been compelled to say 
harsh things about the Dutch. About the material condi- 
tion of the colony he is more explicit. " Manhattan," he 
says, " is seven leagues in circuit, and on it is a fort to serve 
as a commencement of a town to be built there and to be 
called New Amsterdam." His practiced eye takes in the 

37 



ISAAC JOGUES 

defects of the construction, and no doubt he compared it 
with the one he himself had built on Lake Huron. " It is at 
the point of the island. It has four regular bastions, mount- 
ed with several pieces of artillery. All these bastions and 
the curtains were in 1643 only mounds; most of them had 
already crumbled away so that it was possible to enter the 
fort on all sides. There were no ditches. The garrison for 
that and another fort further up consisted of sixty soldiers. 
The colonists were at that time beginning to face the gates 
and bastions with stone. Within the fort were a pretty 
large church, the house of the Governor, quite neatly built 
of brick, and also storehouses and barracks." 

The Governor told him that there were people on the 
island speaking eighteen different languages. " No religion 
is practised publicly, but the Calvinist, and orders are 
to admit none but Calvinists ; but this is not observed. 
There are in the colony, besides Calvinists, Catholics, Puri- 
tans, Lutherans, Anabaptists who are called Mnistcs, etc." 
He describes the character of the river, the ships in the har- 
bor, the exposed position of many of the settlers, the method 
of colonization, the climate, etc. ; and then reverts to what 
he had seen further up the river at Fort Orange. " The set- 
tlement of the Rensselaers is a little fort built of logs with 
four or five pieces of cannon and as many swivels. The 
colony is composed of about one hundred persons in twenty- 
five or thirty houses which are built along the river. They 
are merely of boards, and thatched roofs, and with no 
masonwork except the chimneys." 

It is not likely that Father Jogues left the narrow pre- 
cincts of the colony during his month's sojourn on Manhat- 
tan Island, for naturally he would not expose himself to be 
captured by any prowling Indians who might have come 
down from the Mohawk in search of him. Nor did the 
colony itself afford much opportunity for going about. The 
houses were mostly clustered around Bowling Green. The 
market-place was there, and the Parade Ground, and " a 

38 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

popular store," as we are told in Valentine's " History of 
Broadway," which forms a part of The Manual of the Com- 
mon Council of Nciv York for i86f,. The residence of the 
Provincial Secretary was close at hand, but what interests 
us most is that at the corner of what is now Morris Street 
and Broadway was the parsonage of Dominie Megapolensis. 
It is more than likely that Father Jogues lived during all 
the time he remained in Manhattan with the Dominie, who 
had always shown himself such a devoted friend and bene- 
factor. The parsonage was probably built of brick as were 
most of the dwellings in that quarter, and in all likelihood 
it was still standing during the greater part of the succeed- 
ing century. In course of time it was sold to a relative of 
Governor Stuyvesant, Balthazar Bayard, who erected a 
brewery on the premises, not, however, facing the Parade 
Ground, but down near the river front. The present Morris 
Street was a lane which led to it. Bayard died in 1699, 
and in 1726 his heirs sold the estate to Augustine Jay, the 
ancestor of the well-known New York family of that name. 
The admirers of Father Jogues may thus give more than 
usual attention to that particular section of old New York. 

The Dominie's full name was Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. 
He had been a Catholic up to the age of twenty-three. He 
himself gives us that information. He became a Calvinist. 
and was sent to New York when Kiliaen van Rensselaer 
asked for a minister to look after the spiritual affairs of the 
colony. He was liberally provided for; was given a free 
passage and board on the ship for himself, his wife and four 
children. A parsonage was to be erected for him in the 
colony, and ne was to receive a salary of one thousand and 
ten guilders yearly, with an annual increase of two hundred 
and fifty guilders for three years. He was to be supreme 
arbiter in ecclesiastical matters, with the one limitation of 
the Patroon himself. 

When he arrived in the colony no church edifice except 
what de Vries calls " a mean barn " had as yet been erected, 

39 



ISAAC JOGUES 

though it was then 1642, and the Dutch had been there since 
1614; so he had to preach his first sermon in a storehouse, 
where about one hundred persons were assembled. The 
church in the fort was then being built. It was seventy-two 
feet long, fifty-two broad, and sixteen feet high above the 
soil. We find in a letter of Kiliaen van Rensselaer that the 
people were in such a state that hardly any semblance of 
godliness and righteousness remained. *' The worst crimes," 
says the Patroon, " were dishonesty, licentiousness and 
drunkenness." Indeed Bogardus, one of the predecessors of 
Megapolensis, frequently denounced the people of Manhat- 
tan for their " horrible murders, covetousness and other 
gross excesses." 

The Dominie was a bitter antagonist of the Jews, and 
sent a protest to the Classis at Amsterdam against their 
admission into New Netherlands. His protest was accom- 
panied by a similar document from Stuyvesant, who, like 
the Dominie, was fierce in his utterances on the same topic. 
Both documents make interesting reading, but could not 
safely be published at the present day. 

Megapolensis was on familiar terms not only with Father 
Jogues, but later on he kept up a correspondence both with 
Bressani and Poncet, who also had been tortured at Auries- 
ville. In 1654 Father Le Moyne came down from the Iro- 
quois missions to New York, " on the invitation," says 
Megapolensis, " of the Papists living in Manhattan, and 
especially of some French privateers who had arrived in the 
port with a good prize." 

Of course Le Moyne sought out the Dominie, but the re- 
port made of this visit by the latter does not reveal the 
same kindly feeling which his past relations with the Jesuit 
missionaries might lead one to expect, although Le Moyne 
was careful to assure him that he had not called to debate 
religion but only to chat. It was on this occasion that Le 
Moyne told the parson all about the salt springs and oil 
wells in Onondaga, but Megapolensis was incredulous and 

40 




PETER STUYVESANT 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

put it down as " a Jesuit lie." He referred the whole matter, 
however, to his ecclesiastical superiors in Holland. 

Le Moyne spent eight days in New Amsterdam, and 
began negotiations with the Government for a commercial 
treaty between Canada and New Netherlands. He then 
went back to Fort Orange and from that place wrote the 
Dominie a long letter about the claims of the Church, send- 
ing at the same time three learned dogmatical treatises. 

Evidently this communication irritated the Dominie. 
He wrote an equally long reply. The first ship that set sail 
from New Amsterdam to Canada carried this acrimonious 
rejoinder, but the St. Jean, as the ship was called, went to 
pieces on the rocks of Anticosti, and Le Moyne never read 
the diatribe. Megapolensis, however, had taken care to send 
a copy of it to the Classis of Amsterdam, for he was anxious 
to vindicate himself from the charge of being " a Jesuit." 
His kindly attentions to the missionaries had brought upon 
him that reproach. 

The poor old Dominie had a sad ending. In August, 
1664, four British frigates, carrying one hundred and twenty 
guns and five hundred British regulars, sailed into New 
York harbor. Stuyvesant had no more than one hundred 
and fifty soldiers. The fort was equipped with only twenty 
guns and the supply of ammunition did not amount to much. 
After considerable maneuvering two of the frigates sailed 
past the fort. Stuyvesant wanted to fight and the gunners 
stood with lighted matches ready to fire, but the colonists 
were averse to a struggle which they saw was foredoomed 
to failure. The Governor still hesitated when two ministers 
approached him. One was Dominie Johannes Megapolensis 
and the other was his son Samuel. 

" Of what avail," said Johannes. " are our poor guns 
against the broadside of more than sixty? It is wrong to 
shed blood to no purpose ! " Stuyvesant collapsed, and on 
September 3d the British flag was raised over the fort. 
When the news of the surrender reached Holland there 

41 



ISAAC JOGUES 

was a storm of indignation. Stuyvesant and Megapolensis 
were forever disgraced, and the Directors of the West In- 
dian Company issued the following protest : 

" It is an act that can never be justified that the Director 
General should stand looking between the gabions whilst 
two hostile frigates pass by the fort and the mouths of 
twenty pieces of cannon, and give no order to prevent it ; 
but, on the contrary, lending an ear to preachers and other 
chicken-hearted persons, allow himself to be led in from the 
bulwark between the preachers." 

The Dominie wrote a defense of his conduct, and at 
the same time had the courage to ask for certain back pay- 
ments due to him by the Honorable West Indian Company. 
The Honorable Company replied to his reverence that until 
he should give further satisfaction concerning the events 
at the surrender of New Netherlands to the English his 
salary would be withheld. Three years after that, Mega- 
polensis complained to the Classis of Amsterdam as follows: 

" The West India Company unjustly withheld two thou- 
sand florins owing me for salary and due to me before the 
change of government. I trust that God, who has hitherto 
taken care of me from my youth, when I relinquished 
Popery and was thrust out at once from my inherited estate, 
will henceforth take care of me during the short remainder 
of my life. I am now sixty-five years old and have been a 
preacher about forty years : twenty-seven years here and 
the remainder in North Holland." 

The Dutch officials of New Netherlands wrote in his 
favor, but the Classis continued to frown on him. He was 
still a traitor in their eyes. He did not dare to return to 
Holland, and hence continued his work in New York. 
" Many come to hear me preach," he wrote. " They appa- 
rently like the sermons, but are not inclined to contribute 
to the support and salary of the preacher. They seem to 
desire that we should live on air and not upon produce." 
He died in Nevv^ York on January 14th, 1670, friendless, 

42 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

poor, and with a blasted reputation. This was twenty-four 
years after he had gone up to the Alohawk to inquire into 
the murder of his friend, Father Jogues, to whom, after this 
long digression, we must now return. 

After a month's sojourn in Manhattan, Father Jogues 
went on board the wretched httle vessel which the Gov- 
ernor was hurrying to get ready to bring the news to the 
home government about the Indian aggressions, weighed 
anchor in the river. It was a bark of some say fifty, some say 
a hundred, tons burthen. It left the harbor of Manhattan 
on the 5th of November, so that in mid-winter, with thin 
and wretched clothing and with nowhere to rest his aching 
limbs but the deck on a coil of rope, or in the offensive 
hold, the poor sufTerer was tossed on the waves of the At- 
lantic until the end of December, 1643, when, after frightful 
sufferings, the vessel entered the harbor of Falmouth, in 
Cornwall, hotly pursued by some of Cromwell's ships, for 
the rebellion against Charles I. was then in progress. 

Left alone on the ship, he was robbed at the pistol's point 
of his poor belongings by marauders who were prowling 
about the port. Later on, a compassionate Frenchman 
whom he met on shore obtained a free passage for him 
across the Channel, on a dirty collier — a favor grudgingly 
accorded — and on Christmas morning, 1643, when the bells 
were ringing for Mass, he was flung on the coast of his 
native country somewhere in Brittany. The exact place 
cannot be identified from the indications which he has left. 
Some poor peasants saw the ragged and emaciated creature 
standing on the beach and fancied he was an Irish refugee 
escaping from the Cromwellians. Finding to their astonish- 
ment that he was a Frenchman and a priest, they gave him 
some decent wearing apparel and went with him to the 
church, where for the first time since his capture at Three 
Rivers he was able to go to confession and communion. 
The maimed condition of his hands precluded his saying 
Mass. 

4^ 



ISAAC JOGUES 

It took him eight days afler that to reach the College of 
Rennes. helped on his journey by some charitable soul who 
took pity on him. He arrived there early in the morning 
of the Epiphany, the 6th of January, 1644, and asked the 
porter to inform the Rector that he had news from Canada. 
Hearing the magic word " Canada," the Rector, though 
about to say Mass, laid aside his vestments and hurried to 
the door. " Do you come from Canada?" he asked of the 
dilapidated and ragged man before him. " I do," was the 
answer. "Do you know Father Jogues?" "Very well, 
indeed." " Is he alive or dead? " " He is alive." " Where 
is he?" " I am he," was the reply. 

The amazement and joy of the household may be 
imagined as they crowded around him to embrace him, to 
kiss his mangled hands and kneel for his blessing. They 
led him to the chapel and intoned the Tc Dcinu. The dead 
had come back to them. 

The news of the missionary's return rapidly spread 
throughout France. Everyone was speaking of him : and 
the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, the mother of Eouis 
XIV, intimated her desire to see him, but was compelled to 
express her wish more than once before Father Jogues could 
be induced to be the subject of such public distinction. 
Who were present at the famous audience? We have no 
details about it, but we know that Conde and Turenne were 
then in their young manhood ; that St. Vincent de Paul 
was chief almoner of the Queen, and that possibly they 
with many other of the most famous personages of the 
realm — for the interest in him was universal — may have 
been near the throne when, humbled and abashed, with his 
hands concealed in the folds of his cloak, he entered the 
royal presence. He replied very slowly and reluctantly to 
the various inquiries about his adventures and sufiferings. 
and when at last he was compelled to throw back his cloak 
and tell of the hideous manner in which his fingers had 
been eaten or burned, the Queen, descending from her 

44 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

throne, took his hands in hers and, with tears streaming 
down her checks, devoutly kissed the mutilated members 
and exclaimed : " People write romances for us — but was 
there ever a romance like this? and it is all true." 

Public exhibitions of this kind, however, were like Iro- 
quois torture for Father Jogues. He became exceedingly 
sensitive about it, and those who called to see him were 
warned by the Superiors not to refer to his sufifcrings. He 
even refused to visit his own people. Apparently he did 
not see his " Honored Mother," though perhaps she was 
dead then. But what grieved him most was that, on ac- 
count of the condition of his hands, he was forever debarred 
from saying Mass. His friends did not leave him long in 
that distress, but sent a petition to the Holy Father to re- 
move the canonical impediment. The answer quickly came : 
" I)idigni{tn cssct martyrcin Chrisii, Clirisfi noii bibcrc sa)i- 
guincin." " It would be wrong to prevent the martyr of 
Christ from drinking the blood of Christ." It is noteworthy 
that this quasi-canonization was pronounced by Urban VIII, 
the very Pope who has laid down such stringent laws on 
the canonization of saints. 

What his feelings were when this privilege came we do 
not know. He has left us a record about his first Mass in 
Canada. With regard to this first Mass on his return to 
France he is silent. 



45 



CHAPTER IV 



UEATH 



Naturally one would fancy that this battered warrior 
would now rest on the laurels which he had so nobly won. 
On the contrary, he was on board the first vessel that left 
France for America and he had plenty to do on the voyage. 
The sea was tempestuous, but a worse storm arose among- 
the sailors. They were in mutiny, and had it not been for 
Jogues' ascendancy over them, the captain might have been 
tossed into the sea. The ship was thought to be unsea- 
worthy, and the men insisted on turning back. Influenced, 
however, by the persuasive words of their holy passenger, 
they abandoned their purpose, and reached Quebec in June, 
1644. 

Maisonneuve was just then making his splendid fight 
behind the stockades of Montreal, and thither Jogues was 
sent, to keep up the courage of the defenders and help the 
sick and dying. Finally the Indians asked for a parley, and 
a conference was called at Three Rivers, for July 12, to 
arrange the terms of peace. 

Among the Indians and wearing their dress was William 
Couture, the donnc who had been captured with Father 
Jogues two years before. He had been adopted by the 
tribe and was now coming as its envoy. He never returned, 
however, to his Indian life, but settled down in Canada, mar- 
ried, and lived to the age of ninety. 

The Council assembled under a great tent in the court- 
yard of the fort. In the most prominent place sat Mont- 
magny ; before him in the centre were the Iroquois deputies, 
while back of them stood the Algonquins, Montagnais, and 
Attikamegues ; the Hurons and French being on either side. 
The chief orator was Kiotsaeton, Avho appeared covered 
with wampum belts, and very proud of his official position. 

46 




STATUE OF JOGUES AT DUNWOODIE 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

His speech was a notable one, and those who wisli to study 
Indian eloquence may find it in detail in the Relations, with 
comments by Father Vimont, who calls attention especially 
to the wonderful pantomime of this American Demosthenes. 
When he came to the fifteenth belt he walked up to Mont- 
magny and presented it, saying that it was to wipe out the 
memory of the ill-treatment of Father Jogues. " We 
wished," he said, with splendid mendacity, not knowing 
that Jogues was listening to him, " to bring him back to 
you. We do not know what has become of him. Perhaps 
he has been swallowed up by the waves, or fallen a victim 
to some cruel enemy. But the Mohawks did not put him 
to death." Jogues merely whispered to his neighbor that 
the stake had been prepared all the same. Apparently he 
did not let himself be known, and when the treaty was made 
and the games and banquets began, he had already gone 
back to his work. He had seen too much of Indian revelry 
to be tempted to stay. 

It was decided in the Council to send an ambassador to 
the Alohawks to obtain the assent of the tribe to the conces- 
sions made by the deputies. Every one thought of Jogues. 
He alone knew the language, and hence in due time he re- 
ceived a letter from his Superior assigning him to the task. 
The common of mortals will be thankful to him when they 
read in his letter that he confessed to a shudder when he 
learned of the appointment. Of course his official char- 
acter as ambassador would protect him. But he was also 
a priest and the Iroquois knew it. In fact, the Christian 
Algonquins came to him to express their fear about his 
going, and advised him not to speak of the Faith in his 
first interview. *' There is nothing," they said, " more re- 
pulsive at first than this doctrine, which seems to uproot 
all that men hold dear, and as your long robe preaches as 
much as your lips, it will be prudent to travel in a shorter 
habit." 

This is the first example of the " clerical garb " difficulty 

47 



ISAAC JOGUES 

m New York. It is at the same time a very valuable tes- 
timony as to why Jognes was put to death. When he ap- 
peared as a layman and an ambassador he was treated with 
honor, as we shall see ; when he went immediately after- 
wards with his cassock and cross he was tomahawked, and 
he unwittingly precipitated the disaster by not adhering 
strictly to the advice of the Algonquins, and the Iroquois 
saw that his office of ambassador had not really clone away 
with his priestly character. They discovered that while on 
this visit at Ossernenon he had secretly baptized some 
dying children and had heard the confessions of the captive 
Hurons. Evidently he had some other purpose besides that 
of making peace. 

It took some time before the embassy started ; for there 
was much squabbling between the French and Iroquois as 
to whether the Algonquins were included in the treaty, and 
for a moment there was imminent danger of all the negotia- 
tions coming to naught. In fact it was almost two years 
after the conference, namely, on May i6, 1646, that Father 
Jogues, accompanied by one of Canada's conspicuous col- 
onists, Jean Bourdon, left Three Rivers with four Mohawk 
guides and two Algonquins. They reached Lake Andiata- 
rocte, or what is now Lake George, on the 30th of May. 
Jogues had been there three years before, but he could 
not then have seen its beauty, as he lay bleeding and 
near to death in the bottom of an Indian canoe. But now, 
when he beheld it in all the splendor with which summer 
had clothed the woods in which it is embedded, and gazed 
around at the countless garden-like islands reflected on its 
surface, he gave it a name ; one that was suggested by the 
day on which he found himself crossing its beautiful ex- 
panse. It was the eve of Corpus Christi, and for that reason 
he called it the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. It kept that 
name for almost a century until shortly before the Revo- 
lution a Protestant Irishman, Sir William Johnson, to gain 
favor with the English king, changed it to Lake George. 

48 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

It is most unlikely that it will ever recover the beautiful 
designation given to it by the holy missionary, or even that 
Gilmary Shea's and Parkman's suggestion of changing 
Lake George to Lake Jogues will ever be carried out. But 
who knows? Incidentally, the name is a chronograph, for 
it recalls the day and year of the discovery. 

The travellers did not take the trail by Saratoga, but 
swerved over towards the Hudson, to what is now Beaver 
Dam, then a fishing settlement of the Mohawks. There 
Jogues had the happiness of meeting the Indian girl 
Theresa, who had been captured at the same time as him- 
self on the St. Lav/rence. She had remained as good and 
pious in her savage surroundings as she had been in the 
nunnery at Quebec. Protected by an uncle for some time, 
she finally married a warrior of the tribe. Her delight at 
meeting Father Jogues may be imagined, and he made haste 
to tell her that his first care would be to purchase her 
freedom. The freedom indeed was granted, but its execu- 
tion was never carried out ; and we meet her again 3'ears 
afterward in the Onondaga country, where Father Le 
Moyne saw her and told his friends in Quebec of the won- 
derful holiness of her life. She never saw her own country 
again. 

The embassv then proceeded down the Hudson, and 
passed through Fort Orange, or Albany, a familiar place for 
Jogues, who was glad to see and thank his old friends, and 
to reimburse them for the money they had expended on his 
release. On June 5 he reached Ossernenon after a three 
weeks' journey from the St. Lawrence. His arrival was the 
occasion of surprise and delight for his former captors. A 
council was held on the loth, in which he was the principal 
orator. He assured his ancient enemies '' that the council 
fires lighted at Three Rivers would never be extinguished." 
" Here," he continued, " are 5,000 beads of wampum, to 
break the fetters of the young Frenchmen you hold as cap- 
tives, and 5,000 more for Theresa, that both may be set 
free." All the arrangements made at Three Rivers were 

49 



ISAAC JOGUES 

ricquiesccd in, and the treaty was formally concluded. The 
Wolf clan were particularly attentive to him and made him 
a special present, saying: "You shall always have among 
us a mat to rest upon and a fire to warm you," a manifesta- 
tion of friendship which shows that the tribe as such did not 
remember the incident of Fort Richelieu. 

There were several Onondagas present, and Jogues made 
an earnest and successful effort to win their favor. He 
offered them presents, which they accepted, and he induced 
them to receive missionaries for their tribe. Of their own 
accord they indicated the safest way for these future 
apostles to travel, viz., not through the Mohawk country 
but by the St. Lawrence. It was this acceptance of the 
belts that enabled Le Moyne and his associates later on to 
announce the gospel among the Onondagas. 

On June i6 the ambassadors left Ossernenon, going by 
trail to the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament, and reaching 
Quebec on July 3. Bourdon received valuable land grants 
as his reward for making the treaty. Jogues received the 
reward of death, for he asked immediately to return as 
missionary to the Mohawks. His request was long and 
seriously considered, for the bloodthirsty and unreliable 
character of the Mohawks was a matter of common knowl- 
edge. At last the petition was granted, and on September 
27 he left Quebec for the Iroquois territory, his Superiors 
giving it on that occasion the name of " The Mission of 
Martyrs " ; for said they, " It is credible if the enterprise 
succeed in effecting the salvation of this people, it will pro- 
duce no fruit until it be sprinkled with the blood of mar- 
tyrs." Evidently Father Jogues was convinced of it also, 
for on bidding farewell to a friend he wrote the memorable 
words: " Jho scd noii rcdibo " — " I go but I shall not return." 
The utterance is remarkable inasmuch as it did not mean 
that he Avas going to remain among the Mohawks indefi- 
nitely, for his instructions were merely "to winter" there. 
He did not even purpose to say Mass during this visit, and 
he brought no vestments with him. 

50 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

Was his fate revealed to him? Did he foresee what was 
to happen? The Venerable Marie de I'lncarnation declared 
that in her opinion his words were a veritable prophecy. 
Ordinary people will read that meaning into them also. 

With him were some Huron guides and a jcune gar^on 
named Lalande — a domic like Goupil, who wanted to die 
for the Faith. Before they reached Ossernenon the news 
came that the Mohawks had dug up the hatchet. A box 
which Jogues had left behind him had started the war. 

Indeed on his previous visit he had been apprehensive 
of such an eventuality, for he had shown its simple con- 
tents to the Mohawks before he left, so as to allay their 
suspicions which he perceived were already aroused, and 
hence when the pestilence broke out, and the crops with- 
ered, the savage inference was rapid ; viz., the evil came 
from the mysterious box; there was a manitou in it. They 
hastened to get rid of it, and threw it in the river. But that 
very delusion of theirs, fatal as it was, serves to establish 
beyond any doubt that their wrath was aroused against 
iiim, not because he was a white man, or a Frenchman, or 
a friend of the Hurons, or because he had revealed their 
plans to Montmagny, but solely and absolutely because his 
manitou had wrought them harm. That manitou in their eyes 
was Christianity, which was displacing their ancestral dei- 
ties ; and thus in the wilds of America they did precisely 
what the old Romans did when they strove to crush out the 
Christian " superstition." The conditions were identical in 
both instances. 

As soon as his guides were apprised of what had hap- 
pened they took to flight. But he kept on his way, though 
he nu"ght easily have saved himself by returning to Quebec. 
By his side w^alked the faithful Lalande. Two days more 
would have broi-'^-ht them to Ossernenon. He was at Lake 
George when the Troanois met him. Approaching them they 
saw the sorcerer Ondessonk in his priestly robe. He was 
no longer an embassador but a missionary, bent on teach- 
ins: them the relisrion which the^^ not onlv hated but which 



ISAAC JOGUES 

thev were convinced had brought disaster on their nation. 
and they fell upon him, stripped him of his garments, slashed 
liim with their knives, and led him. mangled 'and bleeding, 
to the very place where he had been so honored when in 
another capacity he stood there the summer before. 

The old Jesuit associates of Jogues call attention to a 
\-ery remarkable and almost startling parallel between this 
scene in the forests of the Mohawk and another memorable 
one in the streets of Jerusalem. Surrounded by his enemies, 
Christ asked: "Why do you wish to kill me?" and they 
answered : " Because you have a devil." To which He 
replied: " I have not a devil; but 1 honor My Father, and 
you dishonor Him." 

Father Jogues could scarcely have been reflecting upon 
the import of the words that rose to his own lips when the 
Indian knives were slashing his body, but he uttered almost 
the same words as those of Our Saviour. " Let us see," 
said one of the savages as he cut off a strip of the victim's 
flesh, " if this white flesh is the flesh of a manitoii."' " No," 
he replied, " I am a man like you all. Why do you put me 
to death? I have come to your country to teach you the 
way to heaven, and you treat me like a wild beast." It was 
merely a difference of place. T'or the Iroquois, Jogues had 
a manitou, or devil ; for the Pharisees, Christ had a devii also, 
and for that they put Flim to death. The servant was in- 
deed very like his Master. 

A council was held at Tionnontoguen to decide what was 
to be done, and it is noteworthy that the famous Kiotsaeton, 
who had spoken so eloquently and so mendaciously in the 
peace conference at Three Rivers, was the priest's chief 
defender. Both the Wolf and the Tortoise family were 
against killing the victim, as were most of the Bears, and 
the official verdict arrived at was to spare his life. But 
one faction of the Bears clamored for his blood, and were 
determmed to have it in spite of the reasoning and pleading 
of the rest of the tribe. 

It is comforting to see, in the gloom and confusion of 

52 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

this last act of the tragedy, the sympathetic figure of the 
kind old squaw. Father Jogues' " Aunt," going- around over- 
whehned with grief, and begging piteously with tears in 
her eyes for her " nephew's " hfe. " Kill me if you kill 
him," she repeatedly said to his murderers. May we not 
hope that the faithful old " aunt " is now with her 
" nephew " in heaven? But she and the others failed. The 
Bears were bent on vengeance, and on the i8th of Octol^er 
they invited Jogues to a feast. What was to be done? To 
refuse was to be killed immediately as outraging hospitality. 
The messengers found him, crouching in a cabin nursing 
his bleeding- wounds. He rose up and followed them. 
Those were his last steps on earth. They approached the 
wigwam, but behind the door stood an Indian with a toma- 
hawk in his hand, and as Jogues stooped down to enter, the 
axe descended with a crash into his skull. His long and 
bloody battle had ended. They hacked ofif his head and 
fixed it on a stake of the palisade, and then fiung the 
mai.gled body into the Mohawk, whose stream it sanctified. 

" So died," says Ingram Kip, the Protestant bishop of 
California, " one of that glorious band that had shown 
greater devotion in the cause of Christianity than has ever 
been seen since the time of the Apostles ; men whose lives 
and sufTerings reveal a story more touching and pathetic 
than anything in the records of our country, and whose 
names should ever be kept in grateful remembrance; stern, 
high-wrought men who might have stood high in court or 
camp, and who could contrast their desolate state in the 
lowly wigwam with the refinement and affluence that waited 
on them in their earlier years, but who had given up home 
and love of kindred and the golden ties of relationshij) for 
God and man. Ibo scd non rcdibo said Isaac Jogues as he 
went for the last time into the valley of the Mohawk. He 
fell beneath the blow of the infuriated savage and his body 
was thrown to feed the vultures, whose shrieks as they 
flapped their wings above him was his only requiem." 

His companion was killed on the following morning. 
Rumors of the tragedy gradually reached Quebec, but all 

53 



ISAAC JOGUES 

doubt was dispelled by an official letter of Governor Kieft, 
of Manhattan, dated November, 1646, to Montmagny: " I 
sent the minister of Fort Orange to find out the cause of 
the murder, and he could get no other answer than that the 
Father had left a devil among some articles confided to 
their keeping which had caused all their corn or maize to 
be eaten by worms." This letter of Governor Kieft is ex- 
tremely precious, as there could be no more convincing testi- 
mony than that of a Protestant minister and a Protestant 
governor reporting officially on the cause of the crime. 
They put it beyond question that it was not a matter of 
politics, or race hatred, or of thoughtless savage fury. It 
was the loathing of what the Indians conceived to be Chris- 
tianity. Just as in greater persecutions, the pretext was that 
its teachings brought disaster upon the country. 

Independently of the nature of his death, the holiness of 
this wonderful missionary was of the most extraordinary 
kind. What he said of Goupil may be applied to him. " He 
was an angel of purity." His obedience was heroic and 
never faltered imder any trial ; the extent of his mortifica- 
tion is evident from his sufferings, which were not only 
accepted but sought ; his spirit of prayer was uninterrupted, 
and of that higher kind to which visions are vouchsafed ; 
his patience was boundless, his charity most tender even to 
the fiercest of his persecutors. " The only sin I can remem- 
ber during my captivity," he told his spiritual friend and 
guide, Buteux, " was that I sometimes looked upon the 
approach of death with complacency "; an admission which 
will give ordinary saints a shiver. 

Was his death a martyrdom ? To be certain about that 
we must await the decision of the Church, but most people 
who read of his sufferings will agree with the Lutheran on 
Manhattan Island who went down on his knees and saluted 
him as a martyr; with the Queen of France who wept over 
his wounds, and with the Sovereign Pontiff himself who 
almost canonized him before his death. All of the Prot- 
estant historians, some of them ministers and bishops, give 

54 



THE DISCOVERER OF LAKE GEORGE 

him that title ; CathoHc writers have no doubt about it ; the 
Venerable Marie de I'lncarnation, who is so revered in 
Canada for her sanctity, reiterates it incessantly; the old 
missionaries who knew him, some of whom were subse- 
quently martyrs themselves, had no hesitation in privately 
invoking his intercession ; and the Plenary Councils of Bal- 
timore and Quebec have asked for his canonization. Imme- 
diately after his death a tribunal was established to officially 
inaugurate the process, and the original documents contain- 
ing the testimony given on that occasion have fortunately 
come down to us. In our own days the process has been re- 
sumed and the taking of testimony about the virtues and 
death of Jogues and the other martyrs of the Canadian mis- 
sions was continued for more than a year. Meantime the 
place where he died has become a sanctuary. Ossernenon 
has become beautiful Auriesville, and every Sunday in 
the summer time thousands of devout people journey thither 
from hundreds of miles away to pray in the holy place which 
the great missionary consecrated by his blood. To con- 
clude, it is abundantly clear that more than for any of the 
other missionaries, the cause of Jogues' death is freed from 
any possibility of its having been associated with political 
or race feeling. It was simply out of hatred of the cross, of 
dislike of his doctrinal teachings, and detestation of the 
Christian morality which he inculcated. 

None of his relics have been found. His clothing, his 
breviary and missal were given to his friend Dominie Mega- 
polensis. All traces of them have been lost, but as the 
Dominie died in New York it is just possible that these 
precious relics may some day be discovered. As to the place 
where the martyrdom occurred there can be no reasonable 
doubt that it is at what is known as Auriesville, on the south 
bank of the Mohawk just above the Schoharie. 



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